An established camping ground on the southern fringe of Tauranga is likely to be turned into a lifestyle housing estate.
Owner Mark Scapens closed the Sanctuary Point Hot Pools and Camping Ground before Christmas - it had operated alongside State Highway 29 at Poike for 30 years - and is now completing earthworks for his housing project.
Mr Scapens, who has owned the low-lying 17ha site alongside Bay of Plenty Polytechnic for 10 years, is presently strengthening the building platform by adding the final 40,000cu m of fill and raising the ground level by one-and-a-half to three metres.
The earthworks will be finished within eight weeks, grass will be sown and Mr Scapens will then make a decision on the type of housing development.
"I'm still researching the market but it may be a pre-retirement village - without the bowling green and hospital - for people who are 45 years and over," he said.
"I'm looking at the people whose children have left home, they can sell their freehold house and they can buy a motor home. They can live in the village for six months, lock up, and go away in their motorhome or travel overseas."
Mr Scapens said pre-retirement villages, similar to a gated community, were popular in Australia - "they evolve out of camping grounds, and are more lifestyle".
He has a land use consent for 205 dwellings on the Poike site - 10ha is conservation land, including wetlands, and he can only build on 7ha zoned Residential A.
"I may build that number of homes or I might bring it down significantly, depending on the final design," Mr Scapens said. "It will be medium density with a mixture of smaller stand-alone homes - up to 120sq m in size and two bedrooms - and two-level, semi-detached town houses.
"The site is big enough to do different precincts and gate them," he said.
The development - house building could start next year - would be worth about $40million, and Mr Scapens is spending $5million on earthworks and putting in services such as roading, stormwater, power and sewerage.
He believes it will take 10 years to fully develop the site. He will clean up the wetlands and make an application to build a walkway linking with the polytechnic which has a bridge over the Waimapu Stream. Residents could then bike or walk to the Greerton Village.
Mr Scapens said he closed the tired camping ground - those living there were relocated - because "it was at the end of its working life without having had a significant investment".
The toilet and amenities block, 17 cabins and 82 powered camping sites have been removed. The camping ground had a capacity for 420 people.
Mr Scapens originally intended to build a private education campus on the site, with up to six private training establishments (PTEs) and student accommodation.
The Labour government put a squeeze on private education development and it was a good way to go broke, he said. Mr Scapens owns three PTEs - Adventure Education, Adventure Sports Institute and Sadler and Associates, which train up to 1800 students a year.